評論
打印
Thinking as a Hobby
把思考作為愛好
William Golding
威廉·戈爾丁
While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking; and that I myself could not think at all.
當我還是個孩子的時候，我便得出了這樣的結論：思考可分為三個層次，而我本人則根本不會思考。
It was the headmaster of my grammar school who first brought the subject of thinking before me. He had some statuettes in his study. They stood on a high cupboard behind his desk. One was a lady wearing nothing but a bath towel. She seemed frozen in an eternal panic lest the bath towel slip down any farther; and since she had no arms, shewas in an unfortunate position to pull the towel up again. Next to her, crouched the statuette of a leopard, ready to spring down at the top drawer of a filing cabinet. Beyond the leopard was a naked, muscular gentleman, who sat, looking down, with his chinon his fist and his elbow on his knee. He seemed utterly miserable.
首先把思考這個問題擺在我面前的是我的小學校長。他在書房里有幾尊小雕像，放在他書桌后面高高的柜子上。一尊雕像是個女人，她光著身子，只披一條浴巾。她似乎凝固在永久的惶恐之中，唯恐浴巾再向下滑；而由于她沒有雙臂，根本不可能將浴巾向上拉，因此顯得特別狼狽。在她旁邊伏臥著一尊豹子的雕像，一副隨時都會撲下來跳到文件柜頂層抽屜上的樣子。豹子后面是一個肌肉發達的裸體男子的雕像，他坐在那里，目光朝下，一只拳頭托著臉頰，胳膊肘撐在膝上。一副痛苦的樣子。
Some time later, I learned about these statuettes. The headmaster had placed them where they would face delinquent children, because they symbolized to him the whole of life. The naked lady was Venus. She was Love. She was not worried about the towel. She was just busy being beautiful. The leopard was Nature, and he was being natural. The muscular gentleman was not miserable. He was Rodin's Thinker, an image of pure thought.
后來我才知道這幾尊雕像是怎么回事。校長之所以把他們放在那兒，讓它們沖著犯了錯誤的孩子們，是因為這些雕像對于他來說象征著生活的全部。那裸體婦人是女神維納斯，她是愛的化身。她并不是在為隨時可能滑落的浴巾而擔憂。她只是忙于展現自己的美。那豹子代表自然，它是在忙著展現自己的自然風采。那肌肉健壯的男子也并不痛苦悲慘，他是羅丹的《思想者》，是純粹思維的象征。
